MR-Tractography in the evaluation of the rehabilitation process in stroke patients

The utilization of games has shown superior results than conventional rehabilitation for stroke patients. We evaluated the effects of these methods in the corticospinal tract (CST) integrity, through MRI-based tractography. Four patients with middle cerebral artery stroke were evaluated, before and after 32 rehabilitation sessions. After CST identification at the level of the pons, manual regions of interest (ROIs) were drawn, by two independent evaluators. We observed a superior result in the neuronal integrity measurements for both evaluators in the game-rehabilitated patients, but the differences were not statistically significant. The results suggest that the CST may recover through rehabilitation, and also that games-based rehabilitation may be superior to conventional rehabilitation, although further studies are still necessary to confirm these findings.